The New Yorker:

Having suffered a series of legal and regulatory setbacks in recent years, the cryptocurrency industry is pouring millions of dollars into the upcoming election. To what end?

By John Cassidy

A month is a long time in politics. As a lacklustre Democratic Presidential campaign has transformed into the Kamala Harris Show, Donald Trump’s reëlection bid has turned into the Crypto Show. After picking J. D. Vance, a former venture capitalist and cryptocurrency booster, as his running mate, Trump appeared at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville, where he promised to create a “strategic bitcoin stockpile” and turn the United States into “the bitcoin superpower of the world.” He also pledged that he would fire Gary Gensler, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who has criticized the crypto industry for a “record of failures, frauds, and bankruptcies,” and who is the nemesis of many crypto bros.

Of course, it’s richly comedic to see Trump, a technophobe who, in 2019, said that the value of bitcoin was “based on thin air,” now promoting himself as its biggest champion and trying to cash in on it politically and personally. At the Nashville event, according to CNBC, dozens of crypto boosters, including the Winklevoss twins and Kid Rock, paid five hundred thousand dollars apiece to attend a private roundtable with the former President. A few days later, a company that Trump owns listed online a “limited” run of gold sneakers emblazoned with a Bitcoin symbol and the words “trump crypto president.” The high-tops were listed at five hundred dollars per pair. (According to one report, they subsequently appeared on eBay at prices of up to twenty-five hundred dollars, with one listing tagged at $69,999.)

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